


Le pendu

by malfaisant



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, Questionable Interpretation of Tarot Cards, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even kings, Childermass supposed, must sometimes get bored, particularly a king who was raised by Faeries. And if that king so happened to have a servant with more loyalty than sense, well, he served a master who was renowned for a great many things, but a strong inclination towards self-denial was not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le pendu

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for [this prompt](http://jsmn-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1273.html?thread=260601#cmt260601) at the **JS &MN kink meme:**
> 
> _"So, I just have this idea of Childermass being fucked, somehow, and either that person or someone watching is playing with his cards. Rifling through them, playing them to jokingly symbolise what's happening or what's about to happen, musing on their various meanings-- those cards mean a lot to Childermass, and to put them in someone else's hands means a lot. Consensual or no, I just want some focus on those cards."_
> 
> After finishing the BBC adaptation I was itching to write something, and this prompt was the great enabler to write shameless Childermass/Raven King porn... I blame Enzo Cilenti for being too beautiful. But we're going with book!John Uskglass, because the show defs dropped the ball on that one.

Even kings, Childermass thought, must sometimes get bored, and in particular a king who was raised by Faeries. And if that king so happened to have a servant with more loyalty than sense (which in this case, Childermass being an entirely sensible and pragmatic person, pointed more to a foolish overabundance of the former than a questionable deficiency of the latter), well, he served a master who was renowned for a great many things, but a strong inclination towards self-denial was not one of them.

Childermass did not remember precisely how he'd gotten where he was. It was merely another Wednesday at the Old Starre Inn, and the York Society of Magicians had just spent another fruitless evening of being scandalised by Vinculus’ nakedness. By the end of it, everyone was annoyed by the company of their fellow magicians and disgruntled by their lack of progress, Childermass most of all. The last few meetings had gone in much the same manner. Time passed, and yet they seemed no closer to reading the King’s Letters than before they had started.

The hour grew late and the Society eventually dispersed, but Childermass lingered. There was a vague remembrance of alcohol and dimmed lights, and a man he knew but could not name sidling up next to where he was sat in the corner where the shadows were thickest. The man had appeared without the least warning, yet Childermass was oddly unalarmed by his sudden apparition. Childermass knew him well, had known him all his life, and it was the most trifling matter that he could not recall his name.

“It is a dreary night to be alone, John Childermass,” he had said by way of introduction. He wore rich dark clothes, contrasting with his uncultivated tones—Northumbrian, perhaps, with a curious hint of French in the shape of his vowels, though this description was woefully inadequate; there was something else in the voice that, though it was neither high nor low, made it seep deep into your bones, like the note of a silver bell on a clear winter’s day.

“Aye, though one could hardly call this being alone, would you not say? Not when I must look out for you everywhere over my shoulder nowadays,” answered Childermass, sounding not a little rueful.

The histories had never been consistent with descriptions of the Raven King’s appearance, or at least most of them were incredibly unhelpful. Many texts spoke of his regal bearing, his kingly expression, but written descriptions of his actual features were few and far in between, and surviving portraits of him were even rarer. But the man in front of Childermass had a pretty face, pale and handsome and painfully young. Long black hair fell around his face like a waterfall, and his large dark eyes were the same shade as the sky of a new moon at midnight.

“You must not be deterred by these early frustrations.”

“If you had wanted people to read your bloody book, why did you have to make it so difficult to read it?” The same enchantment that removed Childermass’ surprise at the presence of the Raven King seemed to have also loosened his tongue and made him more prone to irreverence and blasphemy. Or maybe that was just the alcohol.

The other man smiled. “Why, I thought you were a magician? It would be a paltry sort of magic that should give up all its secrets straightaway. Take your cards for instance.”

The Raven King held up a tarot deck in one hand, and Childermass rifled through his pockets to discover that those cards he held were, indeed, his.

“The cards do not simply tell one’s fortune—the reader has to divine them,” he said, and shuffled through the deck curiously. Childermass turned away in mild embarrassment. Though he was usually exceedingly proud of his cards, he could not now help but feel self-conscious about them, drawn as they were on whatever scraps of paper he could find at the time: old letters, grocery lists, the backs of ale-house bills. Under his King’s scrutiny, they seemed hardly better than the scribbled efforts of a child.

The Raven King set eight cards on the table before them. With little ceremony, he turned over the first card: _Le mat_.

Childermass looked down at the card. The dark-haired king touched his fingertips lightly upon it, tracing the figure of the travelling man and his dog.

“You have wandered long and far upon a lonely path, yet your step never wavers. Your heart and your reason are hardly ever in conflict—you simply allow your faith and your loyalty to guide you. You have only ever been a faithful and loyal subject,” he said, and Childermass did not think he imagined the softness in his expression.

The Raven King turned over another card to reveal _The Six of Coins_. He paused, before looking up at Childermass and smiling widely, revealing a row of bright white teeth. “The cards love you. They know the calluses on your hands and the imprint of your fingertips. This magic adores you.”

“I do not think it can ever be said that I am a figure adored by fortune,” Childermass said wryly.

”I did not say anything of fortune. I said only that the cards of Marseilles love you. They tell me of your loyalty, and implore me that such loyalty deserves to be rewarded.”

Childermass was suddenly reminded of the old stories, attesting to the Raven King’s generosity. They say the King always rewarded his subjects handsomely, often regardless of what they had to say on the matter.

The room dissolved around them, the walls shimmering for a moment, but only for a moment, reforming in the next instant. There was a churning sensation in his stomach, the same one he always felt as when strong magic was performed in his vicinity. Childermass blinked to clear his head, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself already on his feet.

They were still at the inn, but now in the upstairs rooms that were Childermass’ current lodgings. The Raven King was sitting cross-legged on the floor, one hand hovering above the cards that were still arranged in front of him. He showed no acknowledgement of the magic that was just performed.

“The cards say you shall be rewarded, and this one,” he flipped the next card, revealing _XIII Le Diable_ , “says the manner of how you will be rewarded.”

Suddenly, a small movement at the corner of his vision caught Childermass’ attention, and he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. At his feet, his own shadow was contorting on the floor behind him. It transformed before his eyes, a writhing, amorphous mass of darkness—a deep, unyielding blackness that devoured all light.

Then, slowly, the shadow began to bulge out from the floor, and out of its shapeless form Childermass made out the outline of many hands and limbs and coiling tendrils. He stayed transfixed where he stood, mesmerised by the spectacle.

The Raven King turned over the fourth card: _XI La force_. He made a humming, thoughtful noise, and said, “Well, if the cards insist.”

Suddenly, one of the shadow’s many hands shot straight out of the floor, and grabbed Childermass’ ankle.

In an instant, the shadows were upon him. It swelled upwards, burying him to his knees like tar. He could feel the form of hands crawl beneath his waistcoat, caressing the sides of his torso with long, nimble fingers. Feelers wound around his arms and legs like creeping vines, gently but forcibly piecing them apart, as though they mean to pluck each extremity one by one, as one would petals on a flower. One particularly thick limb wrapped around his waist, as though to secure him further.

 _La force_. Power, Childermass thought, even as the limbs undulating around him have started to make the enterprise more difficult. _Power and passion and lust and desire._

As though the shadows could read his mind, something broad and firm rubbed insistently against the front of his breeches. Childermass gasped.

Perhaps, more than anything, the most disconcerting sensation of all was the heat. Far from being cold and empty, everywhere the shadows touched him was enveloped in sharp, penetrating heat. The darkness radiated with it, seeping through his layers of clothes, so that in a matter of moments he was heady and light-headed, his body drenched with sweat. It had the texture of supple flesh; it was as though a fever had taken solid form and started molesting him.

For one delirious moment, Childermass idly wondered whether William of Lanchester ever had to perform such services for his King. The answer he came up with was that it was probably not unlikely.

“Well, William did sometimes gripe about it,” replied the Raven King to Childermass’ unasked query, not troubling to look up from the cards, even as disembodied hands untied Childermass’ neckcloth and pulled his shirttails out of his breeches. “But he was never less than entirely willing, and it is not so much a service as it is your wholly deserved reward.”

For the first time since the shadows appeared, Childermass had rediscovered the use of his voice, albeit with a faint tremble. He bit back a gasp at the press of shadows on the small of his back, against the bare skin where they had crept underneath his shirt, and spoke in a hoarse voice. “My liege, I am not quite certain that I deserve so precious a gift—”

“Ah, but it is for me to determine what you deserve, is it not?”

The Raven King turned the next card: _X La Rove de Fortune_ —another of the Major Arcana, Childermass noted with some incredible professional curiosity, given his present circumstances. All but one of the cards had been so far in this reading, as though the low cards had mostly hidden themselves and given way for their betters. Of course the King would not be made to suffer stumbling through his words with coins and cups and wands. Underneath the King’s fingertips the cards were eloquent and clear-spoken, eager to please their querent.

Childermass looked down at the card, and in the next moment he was on the wheel, crucified, his arms and legs tied to its spokes, turning and turning, the wingbeats of monstrous creatures in his ears—

But then, something wet and soft and tantalisingly warm brushed against the shell of his ear like a tongue—like _tongues_ —and brought Childermass back to himself. They laved at his neck, at the dip of his collarbone, against the tall hollows of throat, sending a thrill running down the length of his spine.

 _And where there were tongues there was sure to be teeth_ , came the thought unbidden to his mind, and the thought did not even finish before he felt their bite on the side of his neck, tracing the line of his carotid. His eyes fluttered shut, and Childermass could not stop himself from groaning, clawed from deep within his chest. He arched against the onslaught of sensation, pulling at the tendrils wrapped tight around his wrists, so hot that he was convinced the darkness had branded his skin where they touched him.

In retaliation, the tendrils abruptly pulled his arms above his head, and pinned his wrists and forearms together. The sudden jerking motion had startled him into opening his eyes, and when he looked up he saw that his King still sat in front of the cards, looking perfectly at ease.

As their eyes met, the King smiled.

Then, all Childermass could see in front of him was darkness, engulfing the whole of his vision, and the darkness had a mouth. The mouth made him recall every kiss and every touch and every intimacy he’d ever known, and suddenly the words of the Yorkshire Game rang clear in his head.

_I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart._

As soon as he thought the words, the mouth smiled at him, the floating grin of a cheshire cat, full of gleaming, white teeth and a red, red tongue. Then it darted forward and took his own mouth in a kiss.

Childermass moaned around the thick, firm muscle suddenly shoved down his throat. A pair of hands held his face, fingers tangled in his hair like the touch of a lover, but it all felt less like he was being kissed and more like his mouth was being fucked, the tongue entwined with his, earnest and brutal and hungry. He felt them all over, a dozen ravenous mouths—warm breath upon his skin, teeth biting into flesh, countless tongues lapping at the marks and bruises they left behind. The hands in his hair tilted his head back, allowing the darkness to deepen the kiss even further.

At some point, some stray hand or enterprising tendril had unbuttoned his breeches, and long, dexterous fingers were groping him through his smallclothes. A tongue ran up the underside of his prick; Childermass would’ve shouted if his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied. He felt his smallclothes and breeches being pulled down to his knees. Now exposed, fingers gripped the base of his cock and began to stroke him, a mercilessly slow pace that soon had him hard and leaking. He thrust his hips shamelessly into the slick grip, desperate and needy against its teasing rhythm.

A part of him—Childermass was unsure whether it was the remnants of his intellect or the dying throes of his instincts of self-preservation—warned him that he should be afraid of such abandon. And indeed, there was fear there, fear and alarm and vulnerability thrumming just beneath his skin like electricity, but alongside it was every want he had ever had, every hidden longing, every dark, untempered _desire_ , so much he was certain he would go mad from it. The darkness was reverent and demanding in turn; the darkness worshiped his body like some delicate treasure, and the darkness tasted his flesh as though it wanted to swallow him whole.

Childermass breathed through his nose, the tongue in his mouth so deep it was gagging him, every moan of pleasure wrung from him muffled by the thick muscle pushing against the back of his throat. Heat engulfed his cock as a broad tongue wrapped itself around the head, the flat of it pressing against the slit. He felt the pressure build at the base of his cock, his balls tightening, he was close, he was close, he was so agonisingly _close_ —

Suddenly, the fingers carding through his hair twisted and yanked, hard enough to make his eyes water. The mouth that had been kissing him retracted, as did the tongues and fingers stroking his cock, save one thick tendril wrapped tightly around the base, pulling him back from the edge. With a frustrated groan, Childermass opened his eyes and saw the Raven King holding up a card between two fingers: _XIV Tempérance_.

There was a pause, as it took a moment for all of Childermass’ faculties to return to him. He looked at his King, and then at the card. Then Childermass let out a string of the foulest curses and blasphemies he could think of.

“The cards are telling you to be patient, John Childermass,” replied the Raven King, after Childermass’ outburst had subsided, and set _Temperance_ back on the floor next to the other cards. He looked him up and down as though to appraise his work, and what a sight Childermass thought he must’ve made: panting hard, hands held up above him, legs spread open; his lips were red and swollen, and his cock bobbed between his legs, heavy with arousal. He cannot think of any instance where he had ever been this vulnerable.

“You smug, insufferable _bastard_ —”

“After all, it would not do to expend yourself when there is so much more I have to reward you for,” and the King’s words were accompanied by the sudden press of slick fingers against the cleft of his arse, pressing at his entrance. The limbs wrapped around his thighs and calves tightened their grip and forced his legs wider apart.

Without any further warning, the two fingers breached him, and Childermass groaned at the stretch, too much, too fast. The fingers were unnaturally long—they curled viciously, spread themselves far apart, withdrew before thrusting back in. They pressed against a spot inside him that made his mind go blank, a shock of pleasure like electric current shooting up his spine, and then they pressed against the spot again, and again, and again.

Childermass was reduced to a mess of incoherent moaning, his legs shaking with strain at each thrust. He had barely given a thought as to how long the King would keep this up when he felt a tongue probing at his entrance before penetrating him, insinuating itself between the fingers fucking his hole relentlessly.

“Bleeding Christ!”

They continued like that, tongues and fingers entering him one by one, and Childermass could not keep track of their number. They curled and thrust and fucked him open, stretching him for what seemed an interminable amount of time, until he’d moaned himself hoarse, at which point the King must’ve deemed him adequately prepared.

The tongues and fingers withdrew as one, and in their place, something else pushed up against his arsehole, something _larger_ , and impossibly thick.

The Raven King made a small, contemplative noise, before he turned the next card, revealing a hand brandishing a brilliant sword, topped off with a crown— _the Ace of Swords._

At the sight of the card, Childermass could not help the huff of vaguely hysterical laughter that escaped him. The noise immediately devolved into a harsh rasp as the massive cock entered him in one deep, claiming thrust.

He felt stuffed, full to breaking, and he no longer stood under his own power, would've fallen to his knees if not for the mess of limbs holding him up. The hands and mouths had resumed their exploration of him, tongues laving at his chest, teeth biting at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Long-fingered hands held his hips in a bruising grip, leaving marks on his pale skin as the darkness thrust roughly into him over and over.

“Please,” Childermass said, desperate for any sort of relief, “please, please—”

He felt a thumb press against his lips, and without much thought he took it into his mouth, cheeks hollowing as he sucked at the digit. Childermass opened his eyes—he did not remember even closing them—to see his King standing directly in front of him, the one hand against his mouth, while the other held up the eighth and last card.

It could only ever have been one card, Childermass thought, as the Raven King let _The Hanged Man_ flutter to the ground like a leaf in autumn. Then he held Childermass’ face in his hands and kissed him, gentle, almost chaste, and Childermass opened his mouth as though in supplication.

 _Surrender_ , the cards told him. _Surrender and give yourself entirely_.

He could not say what he thought the kiss should be like, because his thoughts had never before lead that way. Childermass had long wished to serve his King, like any true Northerner, but he supposed it was a failure of imagination that he never thought to account for something such as this. The Raven King tasted just like the darkness did, like the tongues that plundered his mouth before, and Childermass realised that of course, of course he did, they were all one and the same.

The King broke the kiss and mouthed at Childermass’ neck, his hands tangling in his hair to pull his head back and expose more of his throat.

“My liege, my liege, my king—”

One of the dozen tendrils roaming Childermass’ body wrapped itself around his prick and began stroking him in time with the hard length plowing into him; another hand pressed the flat of its palm against the head, a thumbnail tracing the crown before pushing against the slit. The edges of his vision darkened as his perception tunneled to the singular sensation of overwhelming pleasure bordering on pain.

“Will you come for me, John?” the King asked Childermass, a bare whisper against his ear that all the other mouths began to echo against his skin.

 _Anything_ , Childermass wanted to say, of course he would do anything for his King, if only he could concentrate long enough to make his mouth form words. Come for him, bleed for him, he would have cut the King’s Letters into his own skin with a knife if he could have. He would never deny his King anything, he would’ve said, but instead he just moaned brokenly, pushing back onto the hot, hard length inside him.

The darkness rutted into him with all its weight, before spilling white hot inside him with one last deep thrust. His own release ripped through him with great violence, his spine arching, pupils blown to black. The hands and tendrils continued to stroke him as Childermass rode out his orgasm, until their touch was unbearable on his oversensitised flesh. The limbs holding him up went slack, and he fell forward into his King’s waiting arms, the darkness receding back until they had returned to being mere shadows on the floor.

The Raven King gently took the limp form of his exhausted servant in his arms, and carried him to bed.


End file.
